December 6, 2005
I’m Too Sad To Tell You
I’m Too Sad To Tell You (1971) is a three minute and twenty one second video of the artist, Bas Jan Ader, inexplicably crying. The fact that we’re not told why he’s crying puts our own reaction to the work on very shaky ground. Generally, it’s the audience that’s supposed to weep in front of artworks, not the other way around.
Bas Jan Ader practiced a romantic kind of conceptual art which involved ideas of falling, failure, sadness, and the sublime, among other things. His last project, part of a three part work entitled In Search Of The Miraculous, involved a sailboat trip from Cape Cod to England in July of 1975. He lost radio contact three weeks into the trip and wasn’t heard from again. Less than a year later his body was found off the coast of Ireland.
I’m Too Sad To Tell You is part of an exhibition of currently showing at Perry Rubinstein Gallery in New York. It’s up through the 22nd of December.
